Recently, the University of California, Los Angeles has been in a bit of an uproar. A couple of weeks ago, a junior named Alexandra Wallace uploaded a now infamous video about Asian students in the library. In her video, she rants about the ‘hordes’ of Asian students accepted into UCLA who annoy her in the library by talking on their phones, and she recommends that they go outside when making phone calls to check on their relatives for ‘the tsunami thing’ so that they won’t disturb the other students in the library when they get bad news. What was particularly upsetting to me was that she was (though she withdrew from school following the uproar) a political science major. I shudder at the thought of her becoming a political figure.

Here’s the question: Would the same level of indignation and anger have been aroused in our campus community? Here at Syracuse University, according to our SU Facts website, we have a 23 percent minority-student population, which might seem substantial. But from my own personal experience, lack of multicultural understanding is more often the norm rather than the exception.

Our campus needs to engage in serious dialogue about multiculturalism and diversity, and hope that through our discussions and the understanding that emerges from them, we can also begin to affect the greater Syracuse community and draw them into those conversations. There are some programs already in place, such as the SU Intergroup Dialogue and the STOP Bias effort. But these programs are not widely publicized, and more can still be done.

As an Asian-American student, I have had several experiences with racism in our Syracuse community, both on and off campus, with students, faculty, administrators, community members and complete strangers. It has become so commonplace that my minority student friends and I often trade stories about our latest run-ins with people who displayed ignorance and insensitivity. As part of a graduate organization called the Coalition of Multicultural Public Affairs Students at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, I have been involved in organizing the inaugural Inclusive Governance Conference on April 8, which will seek to discuss issues of race, ethnicity, disability inclusion and gender diversity within the workplace. The conference is free to all and will engage not just our campus, but the greater Central New York community as well.

Events such as the Inclusive Governance Conference (www.compasigc.org) are only the first important steps in engaging more than just minority students. Rather, the entire campus and wider Syracuse community must also begin to participate in such discussions. As a wise professor once told me, we must recognize that your oppression feeds into my oppression, and my oppression feeds into your oppression.

Selena Tam

Public administration graduate student

Published on April 3, 2011 at 12:00 pm